The EU €3 low value consignment duty, priced per parcel

What the charge is

Article 1 of Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382 deleted the chapter of the duty relief regulation that made a consignment worth €150 or less free of customs duty. Article 2 put something in its place: from 1 July 2026 until 1 July 2028, a customs duty of €3.00 per item in a consignment whose intrinsic value does not exceed a total of €150, applying, in the words of the article, instead of the relief that was eliminated.

That last phrase is the one worth slowing down on, because it decides whether the charge is a new cost or a substituted one. It is substituted. For a consignment inside the measure the €3.00 is the customs duty, standing in place of the percentage rate on the commodity code rather than being added to it. The Commission guidance says the same thing from the practical end: because the duty is a fixed amount and not ad valorem, there is no need to establish a customs value for it at all, and therefore no transaction value to identify.

Article 4 makes the regulation binding in its entirety and directly applicable in every Member State, so there is no national variation to look up. What varies between Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and the Netherlands is the VAT that lands on top, not the duty.

An item is a tariff classification, not a thing in a box

The guidance takes its definition from Article 1(61) of the UCC Delegated Act: an item is one or more goods in a consignment sharing the same tariff classification, description and, where the declaration requires it, origin. Quantity is irrelevant. The Commission's own illustration is that five T-shirts attract €3.00 and that three T-shirts plus a watch attract €6.00.

This inverts the instinct a value threshold trained into everybody. Under the old relief the risk sat in the total: keep the parcel under €150 and it cleared free. Under this charge the risk sits in the basket's variety, and a cheap accessory dropped into an order as a courtesy costs the same €3.00 as the item it was thrown in with. A consignment is also narrower than a shipment: the guidance treats goods that were ordered together but dispatched separately as separate consignments, so splitting an order does not merge the charges, it multiplies the parcels that each carry their own.

Which consignments, exactly

Article 2 attaches the charge to two cases: goods whose importation is exempt from VAT under Article 143(1)(ca) of the VAT Directive, which is the Import One Stop Shop route, and goods in a postal consignment as defined in the UCC Delegated Act. The Commission guidance describes the intention more broadly, as reaching all goods in consignments up to €150 sold in distance sales whichever VAT scheme is used, IOSS, the special arrangements or standard import VAT, and whether the goods are declared on an H1, H6 or H7 dataset.

Where the enacted scope and the stated intention sit slightly apart, the regulation itself supplies the bridge: Article 3(1) requires the Commission to assess every month, starting 1 October 2026, whether a diversion of trade flows has occurred, and to propose covering all goods in a consignment at or under €150 if it has. A seller routing around the charge is therefore designing against a measure whose author is watching monthly for exactly that behaviour and holds a drafted remedy.

Two conditions of the old relief no longer have to be met, which widens the charge in ways that catch people out. The guidance states that it applies to the goods the former Article 24 excluded, alcoholic products, perfumes and toilet waters, and tobacco. And whether the goods are dispatched directly to the consignee is no longer relevant.

The €150 is an intrinsic value, which the UCC Delegated Act defines for commercial goods as the price of the goods themselves when sold for export to the Union, excluding transport and insurance unless those are folded into the price and not separately invoiced. Freight does not push a consignment over the line. It does raise the customs value that VAT is charged on, which is why it appears in the worked figures below but not in the threshold test.

Who is billed

The Commission's June 2026 announcement puts it plainly: the seller or importer is responsible for declaring and paying the duty. The guidance is more precise about who that is for a distance sale, stating that the importer is either the person supplying or the person facilitating the distance sale. A marketplace acting as deemed supplier under Article 14a of the VAT Directive is a person facilitating, so the charge reaches the platform and not only the merchant listing on it.

Four consignments, priced

These use the convention the calculator on this site uses for an EU destination: duty on the CIF value, import VAT on the CIF value plus the duty, landed cost the sum of goods, freight, duty and VAT. That the flat duty is itself taxed is not an artefact of the method, it follows from Articles 85 and 86 of the VAT Directive, which put the customs value and the duties due by reason of importation into the same taxable amount. Comparison percentages are this site's verified EU third country rates for the codes named, and each links to the page that sources it.

Consignment 1 is the case the charge was designed around, and on it the charge is a discount. Those T-shirts classify under HS 610910, which carries a 12% EU third country rate. Outside the measure the same parcel would pay €8.16 of duty and €14.47 of VAT, landing at €90.63 rather than €84.49. The flat charge saves €6.14 on a €60.00 order.

Consignment 2 is where sellers get hurt, and it is the case nobody models. HS 851713 is zero rated in the EU under the Information Technology Agreement. A €140.00 phone paid no duty before 1 July 2026 because the relief covered it, and it would pay no duty after 1 July 2028 either, because its rate is 0%. For two years in between it pays €3.00, plus €0.57 of VAT charged on that duty, a total of €3.57 that exists only because the charge is flat. Every zero rated line in a catalogue, and the Information Technology Agreement covers a great many of them, moves the same way.

Consignments 3 and 4 are the same shopper adding one cheap thing. A €5.00 phone case, 3.85% more merchandise, raised the duty from €6.00 to €9.00, which is 50% more duty. Value did almost nothing and the classification count did everything. This is the shape of the whole measure in one line.

One euro either side of €150

The old relief had a cliff at €150 and so does this. Take the same T-shirts to Germany with €12.00 of freight. At €150.00 of goods the consignment is inside the measure and the duty is €3.00, with €31.35 of VAT, landing at €196.35. At €151.00 it is outside, the 12% rate on HS 610910 applies to the full CIF value, and the duty is €19.56 with €34.69 of VAT, landing at €217.25.

Where IOSS changes the arithmetic and where it does not

It does not change the duty. IOSS is a VAT simplification and the €3.00 is customs duty, so a fully compliant IOSS seller owes it on every item of every in-scope consignment. The Access2Markets notice states the charge applies whichever VAT regime is used, and the guidance adds that it is no longer relevant whether the goods are shipped directly to the recipient.

What IOSS changes is where the VAT lands. Under IOSS the importation is exempt under Article 143(1)(ca) and the destination's VAT is charged to the shopper at checkout instead, so consignment 1 becomes €60.00 of goods and €8.00 of delivery with €12.92 of German VAT collected at the point of sale, and the €3.00 duty owed separately by the declarant. Outside IOSS the same consignment carries €13.49 of import VAT instead, computed on the customs value plus the duty, which is the figure in the table. The totals differ, and which one a seller is looking at depends entirely on how they registered.

What happens on 1 July 2028

The guidance states it directly: the temporary duty applies until 1 July 2028, and after that date goods sold in transactions qualifying as distance sales become subject to the normal duty rate irrespective of their value. The flat charge is a bridge to the permanent regime, not a destination.

Whether the bridge is long enough is an open question the regulation itself asks. Article 3(2) requires the Commission to assess by 1 December 2027 whether a centralised Union IT infrastructure capable of levying import duties on distance sale consignments will realistically be operational by 1 July 2028, and to propose extending the transitional measure if it will not. Plan for the percentage rates to return on schedule, and treat an extension as the contingency rather than the base case.

What sellers should do, before and after

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